On this blog, I -- John Lofland, jlofland@dcn.org -- report on social life and organization in the Old North area of Davis, California sub specie aeternitatis.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

540 Members of the ONDNA?: Counting Old North Populations (142)

The Nextdoor Company website managed by the ONDNA highlights
that company’s declaration that the Old North has 162 households. One
implication might be that the number 162 provides a numerical framework for
thinking about ONDNA membership.

As everyone knows, the ONDNA is a City-fostered and overseen
neighborhood association that, because of its quasi-official status, includes
as members, in addition to residents, neighborhood-located organizations and landlords.
All Old North people in these three categories are automatically ONDNA voting
participants.*

Given this membership inclusiveness, it is of interest to
know how many members the ONDNA has. Is it something like the 162 “households”
the Nextdoor Company declares or some other number?

Seeking to identify the membership number, I counted
buildings “on the ground” and I visited the online block statistics of the 2010
U. S. Census. Here is what I found.

PLACE NUMBERS

1. Residences. Using
the terms residence and household as synonyms, I have counted the number of
places in which people can live in the Old North. After doing that it occurred
to me to look up the 2010 census block statistics. I was happy to discover that
the Census and I largely agree, except that I identified some residences the
Census did not and the Census identified a number that I did not. Adjusting the
counts to accommodate these differences, I arrive at a total of202residences. Some details are given in Table 1.

2. Organizations. There
are Old North buildings and units within buildings that people use but in which
they do not live. These “units” are operated by educational, religious, and business
organizations. By my count, there are 35 of
these. Their street-distribution is shown in Table 2.

PEOPLE NUMBERS

1. Residents. Counting
people is much harder than counting places. I did not even try to do this
because the census-takers did it for us in 2010. Table 3 shows those numbers by
street and block-hundreds. The total is 413.

2. Landlords. The
Census asked people whether they rented or owned (shown in Table 4), which is,
of course, also a count of landlords. About 60% of Old North residences are
rentals, which is some 125 units. A number of landlords own several units, so I
am guesstimating that the Old North has about 100
landlords (perhaps less if I am underestimating ownership concentration).

3. Organizational
Reps. Providing ONDNA membership to ON organizations means, as a practical
matter, organizational representatives. Assuming each organization has only one
rep, there are 30 or so of them.

TOTALS

1. Although places are not a category of ONDNA membership,
for some reason we count and fret abut them anyway. They add up to over 230 (not 162).

2. The de facto ONDNA membership appears to be about 540 people (assuming there is no age barrier to ONDNA
voting membership).

______

*The City reasons that a government-sponsored neighborhood association should be open to all “stakeholders” and without financial barrier. Therefore, the base is expansive and membership is free; dues are voluntary.